Wednesday, 21 February 2007

‘Prison Break’ tv show (airing on Channel 5 in the UK) is advertised on Ch5 with this piece of music that really stalks my soul atm (if that doesn’t sound too wanky, which of course it does).having not heard it properly but snatches – like last night, having the tv on, but in the other room doing dishes – you get snatches and so race to your tv barking like a thing possessed, trailing dirty dish water and flapping your towel, and you get bits. (and shit on carpets.)

i don’t know if it’s some His Name is Alive-type stuff (it could be part of their catalogue if ya get me), or some old blues or it’s perhaps some blindingly well-known obvious tune that because i’ve heard it from a way off, escapes me. i know literally a second of it. a classical pianist sitting down to belt out show ballads in a folk style, at a Steinway with added juice.

to me it sounds a bit like an old man’s heart breaking, but in a cathartic, soulfully majestic sort of way. (cheerful ain’t we.)

perhaps i should sit in front of a tv for 48 hours with Ch5 on and nothing else, invariably hearing it eventually.could be an arty experiment, couldn’t it?

aside from the recent issue of the wire (how sweet, btw, was Hua Hsu in saying two things he liked in '06 were the magazine and Bawlmer tv show - of same name) with the Melvins on the cover and Stelfox's fucking awesome Texan rap effort (ever since my dear boy Dan got me into Scarface i've been a big fan of the whole Geto Boys experience), the January issue recently was particularly safe.

Keenan on MV & EE, Barker in Beijing, Gary Smith, the lists (dubstep, rap, Carla Bozulich, oh yes) were all clearly extremely tasty toppings on a good pie but Jon's headline reviews piece on Dredd Foole was lovely.he can get some phrasing, that boy.compliments due.

i was told that Unity House on the outskirts of Stoke-on-Trent city centre has been demolished to make way for offices. the building was perhaps (probably definitely) the tallest in Stoke; my memory is hazy (i lived in Stoke for three years in the late 90’s as a Keele undergrad and was last in the Potteries for a weekend in the summer of 2005) but i seem to recall it dominating the Hanley skyline in a way no other building did, save perhaps the grey, blocky police building (it is a police HQ isn’t it?) close to the Sugarmill gig venue. i once saw a Swedish metal outfit eating Italian at a restaurant by the Sugarmill. Entombed or someone like that.

Unity had a certain elegance and was clearly quite tall, it was near a boozer called the Black Lion that was quite a fine, lively, local alehouse (the gaffer was Scottish iirc at the time we all drank there), on the outskirts of the city centre, near the Shelton district where five of us lived and laughed at the local gangsters holding their guns cocksure looking all silly in their cars (a house containing a Brummie and a Mancunian is – by British standards – well placed to pass such judgments). Shelton had some nice graffiti, beautiful quiet old canals, a pretty graveyard, and a classic laundrette.

certainly surely the biggest building in the Stoke urban area was the steelworks near Vale’s ground kind of way (Tunstall? Burslem? closer to Stoke actually and i remember wrong? i dunno), which seemed to approach Chinese size in my teenage formulation. (not the steel factories with 100,000 workers over there, ok, but it was pretty big.)

in its last years Unity was a derelict shell more or less, but provided – among no doubt other services – a good space for skateboarding, and a gloriously handsome visual fixture for any confused traveller: a budget Sears Tower, a true building of hauntology. one big thrust (in a series of fantasy novels i loved as a kid the towering mountain lair of an evil sorcerer was described as being like a finger pointing accusingly at the gods) was complemented by a shorter, stepped attachment, the shelves receding from the street, going back shorter the higher that part of Unity climbed.i could ruminate on urban spaces, etc. here but i’m hardly Owen or detroitblog am i.

mind you: now it’s gone and we’ll miss it. it was a superb constant on any bus journey.

the snooker player Ray Reardon had a snooker club nearby (Reardon used to do the summer circuit at British holiday camps after retiring from the pro game and would offer all comers a best-of-three arrangement where he’d split winnings with people who asked him to go easy on them, but give a genuine game – and therefore tonk someone – who said they fancied him playing as well as he could).

Saturday, 10 February 2007

soap opera quote - (i love this)

in Eastenders, Stacey the market-stall holder, speaking to her boyfriend's City trader boss, says she works in a market and he misinterprets what sort of market she means, excitedly asking which and she says something like Bridge Street. we sells tops and knickers. i'll even model the merchandise for you if you like.

Thursday, 1 February 2007

on the subject of football and - whilst i don't think this is big enough to bother Robin C. with it's still worth flagging up in the admittedly highly unlikely event he reads this - an interesting letter to a Manchester United fanzine (UWS, good interview with Rio Ferdinand, who seems a top guy) from a Manchester City supporter, enclosing comments re. a photo taken in Cardiff of some United fans at a game.

the particular fan in the centre is carrying a sign that says MANCS NOT YANKS.he is also wearing one of those New York Yankees baseball caps that are all the rage, er, everywhere in the world.

yet another terribly crass and really quite thoughtless BOOM-BOOM moment from this blog

with the high profile arrests in Birmingham yesterday (George Alagiah, Jon Snow and various others mangling honest Brummie hood names a la Alum Rock was a peculiar joy: y'all know i'm down with the central BHAM – Snow in particular elongated a few words, a bit like how Dr Cox does when angry), we suddenly have new life breathed into the Birmingham City football ditty